The Soft Spots in the Austin Market

Even in the hottest market in America, not every home actually gets multiple offers! Not every home even goes under contract the first weekend, believe it or not! For those of you who don’t have the stomach for 100k over bidding (myself included) or a lot of the other madness associated with this bonkers market, we’ve created a soft target guide.

1. Tuesday homes: Expect something quirky or stigmatized for most properties that make it to Tuesday. Most homes will list on Thursday/Friday, and end bidding by Sunday/Monday evening. Tuesday homes will often need some updating, have some history of foundation repair, have an interesting floor plan, etc. Occasionally, it is just a case of a seller being more ambitious on price than the market can bear, too high to even get LIST price offers. Whatever the case, although it will mostly be “the leftovers,” you may be able to find something in that bin that you like if your preferences are flexible.

2. Day five homes: If a home hasn’t gone under contract by day five, not only do they usually not have multiple offers, but they’re unlikely to get multiple offers later as well. I don’t have hard stats on this, but probably well over 90% of homes that get multiple offers do get them the first weekend on the market.

3. Fixer uppers: There is no search field that specifies this, but we have developed a way of doing this, searching the private agent remarks for just the right phrases that brings the fixer uppers to the surface. Ask us and we can set you up on it. You can find mostly fixer upper homes here.

4. Think outside of the bell curve: Our market has a mass of people looking for homes, and many of them looking for the exact same kind of home. Any time you shift even a little bit to outside of the market’s preference set, you diminish your competition. The toughest homes / fiercest bidding wars will be ones that have all the stars align on these characteristics: fully updated, pristine / move in ready, three schools all highly rated, open floor plan, little or no carpet, cathedral ceilings, big yard, backs up to greenbelt / has views, near downtown, dazzling curb appeal, large garage… You get it. My point is, if there are any of these preferred features that are negotiable to you, something you don’t HAVE to have, then this preference set allows you to step outside of the dog fight a little bit. The good deals (a relative term) are unfortunately not found fighting for the same type home as everyone else is. Basically, any way that you’re quirky is to your advantage.

On the last one, I would have mentioned that under 500k is where the buyers pile really high, but the Californian exodus has changed that. I’ve read they have 32% more budget on average than the local Austinite. Since their prices were already more than 32% higher than us, that often means that even the over 500k homes have much steeper competition these days. Even over at over a million, bidding wars are still par for the course in many areas. The biggest difference is the number of offers, and the percentage over bidding, which is lower for 1 million plus priced homes. I lost an offer this weekend that had 54 offers. I’ve NEVER heard of that for a million dollar home, but in somewhere like Round Rock or Pflugerville it probably happens somewhere every weekend.
For more information about overbidding at different price point, check out our recent post. There’s also lots of other great resources on our blog to help you wrap your mind around this craziness. Let us know any way we can help.